This paper is work in progress. Please read and
make comments on the
information presented, but please do not consider it a finished piece of
work. I am only just starting to get ideas written down. If you can
offer any assistance, please get in contact with me.

In Ottawa, Canada's Capital, community electronic networking has become more
and more an important part of how the people in our community are able to
talk to one another. As this importance increases, we need to
have room to expand this social interaction, and to create a
sustainable environment where we can build something that will be
available to everyone well into the future.

In 1991 when George Frajkor and Jay Weston brought the idea
of creating a Freenet to Dave Sutherland (Head of Carleton Computing Services) they
may not have realized that this was just the beginning of the
greater expansion of Community Computing in the National Capital Region.
While there was already an existing and growing electronic community, the
National Capital Freenet would represent a first look for many
people that otherwise would not know about this very expanding medium of
communication.

Unfortunately there has been problems with this growth, and it is to
these problems that I wish to address this paper. Before I get into
these problems I first wish to state that I fully recognize the very
hard work of many individuals to make the National Capital Freenet(NCF) a
success in many ways. It has had a good effect of bringing many people
together to exchange ideas that otherwise would not have had this
chance. Many friendships have been formed as a direct result of the
creation of the National Capital Freenet, and a large amount of
information from many different organizations have been made available to
Freenet members.

The NCF organization is, however, experiencing growing pains. What has
been created is a centrally located organization that is not able to
expand beyond the confines of this single organization and out into the
much larger community. The creation of the NCF has created a service
where the members of this service are treated differently than those
member of other services within the community. While the NCF
organization is receiving funding from government as being the
representative of the community network, implementation of their system
and their reaction to suggestions from non-members have
clearly indicated that they are only concerned with their own membership
and not in the community as a whole.

It is this gap between the community network within the Ottawa region
and the National Capital Freenet that needs to be closed.

While a number
of technical proposals have been made over the years, it is currently my
belief that it is not a technical issue that we are dealing with, but a
political and organizational one. We are dealing with an organization
that is trying to create a centrally controlled community network when
the very basis of a community network needs to be the open exchange of
ideas completely independent of the individuals political or
organizational affiliations. We are creating a monopoly system where one
must be an affiliated member of a single organization in order to benefit
from the rich information that is being made available by other community
organizations. This is something that needs to be solved if our
community networks are going to be able to be sustained in an ever
expanding area of electronic communications.

We currently have all our eggs in one basket, and this basket is
always on the verge of falling. We desperately need to take these eggs
out and place them in a number of separate baskets so that a few things
happen:

no single basket falling will mean the complete demise of a large
portion of the community network.

different organizations will be able to co-exist in the
community without one single organization and group of people getting
preferential treatment.

individuals will be able to become more involved with their
particular organization and not ever feel that they are given no choice
as to what community networked organization they wish to support.

Once we agree that we need to build a stronger and larger community
network comprised of a number of organizations working together, we need
to then address ideas of how to implement such a system. While I do not
feel that I have all the answers to all the details, I do believe that I
have some very sound suggestions on how to deal with the basic issues. I
am not a political scientist, but a computer scientist. I know how to
implement ideas in technology, but as we may all agree, this is not an
issue of technology but of political structure of an organization.

This paper is divided into three main parts:

In the first part we need
to discuss the creation of an umbrella organization for community
networks in Ottawa. Just as other organizations have gotten together for
lobbying for funding and volunteers, so does our community network. This
organization would not be directly affiliated with any specific
organization implementing a computer based service to the community, and
thus funding would then go to the organizations that are best able to
serve the community.

In the second part we will discuss the structural changes required to
the National Capital Freenet organization in order to allow it to think of
itself as a service for and member of a larger community, rather than
it's current way of thinking where it seems to feel that it is in itself
the entire community.

The third and final part of this paper will discuss the technology
changes to the National Capital Freenet in order to implement the ideas
discussed in the rest of the paper. These changes are not as complicated
as some people would have us believe, and there is enough resources and
volunteers already willing to work to make this a reality - all that is
needed is the support of the NCF organization, rather than it's
opposition, which has previously been the case.

The National Capital Freenet has brought Ottawa online and to the front
door of the electronic age. Lets work together and bring Ottawa directly
into that door and into a sustainable community network that will much
more easily expand with the needs of the community, and not be limited by
the resources and beliefs of a single organization.